Sportsmen have historically used small huts or shelters for protection against adverse weather conditions often associated with winter sports such as ice fishing. In particular, ice fishermen customarily build small, ice fishing shacks on the surface of a frozen pond or lake and then fish through a hole cut through the ice within the shack. A typical ice fishing hut is relatively large and is not portable, i.e. it must be erected on the ice of a frozen lake, then disassembled and removed at the end of the ice fishing season.
Portable shelters provide an alternative to conventional ice fishing huts or shanties. Portable ice fishing shelters are, in general, known, as exemplified by Burtoft U.S. Pat. No. 3,224,150 issued Dec. 21, 1965. Some such shelters generally resemble tents which can be erected at the ice fishing site. See, for example, Debolt U.S. Pat. No. 3,509,891 issued May 5, 1970 and Hendrickson U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,398 issued Apr. 1, 1975.
Other portable shelters have been proposed which combine the features of a collapsible hut with a sled for transporting the unit over the ice. Schoenike U.S. Pat. No. 3,157,185 issued Nov. 17, 1964, Flynn U.S. Pat. No. 3,854,746 issued Dec. 17, 1974 and Molodecki U.S. Pat. No. 4,631,877 issued Dec. 30, 1986 exemplify such collapsible shelters. Still other collapsible portable shelters have been proposed wherein the unit is turned on end prior to use. See, for example, Kuhn U.S. Pat. No. 3,492,015 issued Jan. 27, 1970, Peters U.S. Pat. No. 3,173,436 issued May 16, 1965, Winkelman et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,526,391 issued July 2, 1985 and Hunt U.S. Pat. No. 4,438,940 issued Mar. 27, 1984.
Such prior portable, collapsible shelters suffer from a variety of disadvantages. Most prior shelters are large, cumbersome and difficult to set up. Turning the unit on end manually may be required. The present invention addresses these disadvantages and provides a portable collapsible shelter having additional advantageous features.